I knew I’d screwed up when the rep said, “Wait – you live where?”

I’d called into my brokerage firm in the U.S. to deal with an issue that had cropped up, and in explaining the issue, I mentioned to the rep that I live in Prague. She freaked out and immediately, shut off my access to my own account.

“I have to talk to compliance,” she told me. Thus began a week of annoyances.

Thing is, U.S. financial institutions and state driver’s license agencies, among others, demand you have a physical address in America. Not a commercial mailbox address. Without that, your accounts can be–and will be–frozen. For the longest time, there was no  way around this, other than using a friend’s, parent’s, or adult child’s address. And that, I can promise, causes headaches.

Now, along comes VPM and its Virtual Private Mailboxes that work within federal rules to provide you an address that keeps banks and brokerages and the DMV happy. They’ll scan all mail, store it for up to 6 moths, deposit any checks that arrive, and ship all your mail to you, if requested – anywhere in the world.

An absolute must for any digital nomad, expat, or retiree living abroad…